THEY LIKE JESUS, BUT ....

From Steve: A friend of mine and fellow "evangelist" Micah Brickner published this comment a few months ago on his blog ORANGE FAITH. I thought it was worth reflection and discussion.

I just started putting together a teaching based on Dan Kimball's They Like Jesus, But Not the Church. He talks about the fact that the world likes who Jesus is, but the clearly do not like the people who follow Him. If you look at all of the people who were hurt by Christianity, they were hurt by people in the church, not by Jesus Himself.

If we look throughout pop culture, Jesus is a huge part of things. A ton of TV shows make references to Him, music stars, actors and actresses; they all talk about Him. Jesus is a popular guy. However, a lot of people choose not to follow Him. Why? Because of His followers.

As the church, we need to show people that we are like Jesus. Gandhi once said that he would have become a Christian, but he never met one. While I believe that his statement was a bit extreme, it is based on some truth. We let ourselves get wrapped up inside of a bubble and forget to connect with people. We become so distant from people in the world that we forget how to treat people who are not Christians. And so, people think we are weird, crazy, and intolerant.

Jesus wants us to be missionaries in our communities, teaching people the things that He taught us. We need to share the change that He has made for us with the world. Just because people respect Jesus, or like Him, doesn't mean that they understand the technical terminology that we have developed over time. We have to be relevant to the world, we have to be in it, and we have to love them... all of them. No matter what.